Author: Zhao Yifeng, Professor, Faculty for Asian Civilization Studies, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, 130024

Abstract: During the Ming period, the inland Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, Catholics, and Shamanism and other popular religions played different roles in the social and religious life in China. The state, accordingly, carried different policies toward these religions and religious believes. The Southeast Asian origined Buddhism had deeply rooted into Chinese culture, however, its contradiction with Confucianism was far from resolved. Since the mid Ming period, stimulated by the enhanced religious activities of the royal family, Buddhism confronted sharper contradiction with Confucianism. Some scholar-officials took a strong position against the construction of Buddhist monasteries and Buddhism itself as a general target. The Ming policy to Tibetan Buddhism was similar to that to the inland Buddhism, but with a lot of concerns about the western frontier policies. Some of the Ming Emperors had particular interest to Tibetan Buddhism because that the lamas were usually able to perform mysterious body cultivation things. This caused serious critics from the scholar-officials. With a rather domestic origin, Daoism came across only mild contradiction with Confucian scholar-officials. On the other hand, many emperors of the Ming dynasty believed in Daoism, which affected both the state politics and the relationship between the scholar-officials and the monarch. As a result, scholar-officials delivered severer critics to Daoism. The Islam was rather self-contained in the Ming society as a whole and the Ming government generally treated its relation with Islam as a social group rather than a religious body. After the mid Ming period, Catholic was once again introduced into China. The reform-oriented scholars in that time generally treated the Jesuits with tolerant attitude although isolated contradictions did happen. The elite of the Ming China commonly tolerant different believes and they saw a diversified and active picture of popular religious activities. The Ming government generally treated popular religions as folk customs and usually applied non-action policy toward them. Nevertheless, it did announce forbidden of some religious activities that were viewed as vicious or bad customs and severely banded some secret religious organizations. Under a Synthetical perspective, the Ming policies of religion had three dimensions, namely, general freedom of believes, maintenance of the secular nature of state politics, and keeping social stability and state control of society. It was Confucian politic and social philosophy and the collective efforts of the scholar-gentry that kept the above-mentioned spirit in function. On the other hand, changes and contradictions were resulted by the penetration of religions other than Confucianism to state intuitions, the religious activities of the royal house, the ever growth diversification of popular religious believes, and the synthetic tendency in dealing with issues of believes of some scholar-officials.